This particular collection has other people's games, zines, and other materials that are about, inspired by, or have themes related to fictionkin, fictives, experience-taking, and other fictionfolk and experiences of fictionality.
What does that mean? Psychology as well as informal communities recognize a variety of ways that people can have a profound sense of personal connection to a piece of fiction. The following definition is an excerpt from "A list of some alterhuman identities and groups," an article that I helped co-author:
"Fictionfolk is an umbrella term for many sorts of identities that come partly or wholly from fiction. Fictionkin identify as characters or species from fiction, and their community started in the early 2000s. A plural system member with origins from fiction is a fictive, which psychologists call a fictional introject. When someone has the brief experience of becoming someone or something from fiction, that’s a fictionflicker, which psychologists call experience-taking."
Additionally, when a person feels a strong identification with a fictional character, but doesn't see that as who they literally are themself, that's fictionhearted. When someone feels a sense of home about a fictional place, but doesn't consider themself to literally come from there, that's a hearthome. These are only some of the sorts of experiences of fictionality that people can have.
This collection is part of a series of curated collections of itch.io creations for alterhumans.
Content: Rated R. This talks about a variety of traumatic experiences that the author's system survived. That said, this volume is focused on surviving, healing, and thriving.
Medium: Zine.
Genre and subject: Nonfiction. Spirituality.
About: As described by the author,
"When you’re severely mentally ill, religion or magic may seem like nothing but worsening symptoms, but what happens when therapy, medication, and doubt doesn’t make it go away? Herein, Mori of LB Lee talks magic and multiplicity, sanity and spirituality:
• "Autonomancy, semiotics, and dance to communicate with the subconscious mind (depicted as a cartoony whale)
• "Exorcism, coercive belief modification, and how belief is less about thoughts or feelings than behavior
• "Sanity-boosting, inner community building, and body rooting"
As a reviewer, one of the parts of this book that I personally found the most useful is the concept of the "otherordinary," which Lee found in Megan Rose's book Spirit Marriage. Highly recommended reading for anyone who finds they have to use a unique spirituality, or have experiences that they're reluctant to call spiritual.
Relevance to this collection: One of the things this zine talks about is how sometimes what really speaks to your subconscious is fiction, even if you would prefer it to connect with a mythos that you feel is more respectable.
Content: Rated R.
Accessibility: Black and white. Alt text included.
Medium: Zine.
Length: 52 pages.
About: As described by the author,
"Many a multi has an inner mythos, a Story that fuels them in a way that’s hard to explain. These stories can have a life of their own, and yet they’re rarely discussed, certainly not in the context of religion. But how different is fiction from religion, really? What makes something a work of entertainment, vs. an article of faith?
"In this final installment, LB Lee take on mythos and story, including:
Relevance to this collection: This explores the connections between the imagery in this system with the fiction that this system had read or written, and why those connections happened.
Content: Rated G.
Medium: Mini zine. There is one version in a paged format for reading on screen, and another for printing on a single sheet of paper and folding.
Genre and subject: Nonfiction. Perzine.
About the zinesters' own plural system. "Heavily inspired by LB Lee's Loony Brain Primer—it's a characteristically nonspecific introduction to the system! It contains no headmate names, sources, or descriptions—only archetypes, which are the five flavours of system member we've noticed over time."
Relevance: This zine talks a little bit about how many of the zinesters' plural system members are fictives and how they experience that.
Content: Rated PG for some swear words.
Medium: A narrative comic book personal zine, full color, for reading on screen.
Duration: 13 pages, with front cover.
Accessibility: Some text is intentionally overlapping, obscured, low contrast, or otherwise difficult or partially impossible to read, because of legitimate reasons of artistic expression. Not screen reader compatible.
Story: A plural system broods about things while driving home from work. They worry among themselves about feeling overworked and lonely, and wanting to share meaningful experiences with others who care about them. This leads to a brief but very difficult dissociative experience. (The system members are depicted as nonhuman creatures. Several of them are fictives, that is, they came from a world that is known here as fiction, and they have some dialog about that.)
Vibe: intense, clamorous, stressful, moody, wistful, but (mild spoiler) ends on a wholesome note.
Content: Unrated. I haven't read this yet, so explore with caution.
Medium: Book.
About: "Fantastically framed yet universally relatable vignettes by fictive members of a DID system, about the facets of life that have stuck with them over the years. Together, this collection of short pieces challenges ideas about love, life and death, belonging, the meaning of life, freedom, and of truth. Over a span of more than a decade members of the Forest Folk System have written fictional and personal-essay pieces to relate their experiences and explore what they've discovered through them."
Rated G. A sci-fi novel where a fictional character from a VR game ends up sharing a player's body. Plural Stories review.
A Bitsy game about identifying with creatures cast as villains in fantasy. Thoughtful, powerful, meaningful.
A solo journaling game, inspired by alterhuman experiences, especially nonhuman and fictionkin.
The second volume of these true stories is about an abusive group centered on fictionkin.
